Winners of NFC Windows Application Contest announced

Professional developers and students alike were invited to share their ideas for developing NFC applications for PCs and tablets running Windows 8 or Windows 8.1. During the initial phase of the contest, over 100 viable ideas were submitted, and more than 80 applicants were enabled with a dedicated NFC Dev Kit.

NXP and its sponsor Lenovo chose the contest’s winners using criteria such as creativity, maturity and the potential for the application to increase the use of NFC in the computing and tablet segment. The winners included Meds Reminder (Australia), Malkyrs: Arenas of Eternity (France), NFC Tag Encryption (Vietnam), NFC YouTube (Singapore) and NFC Secured Synchronization (Singapore).

The Meds Reminder uses NFC tags to send notifications to the patient for medical alerts and compliance to prescriptions. The NFC tag holds all the necessary personalised information for the patient’s medicinal requirements. This information, input into the tag by the patient or the doctor’s office, includes start date/time, frequency, dosage and medicine name. This information can then be transferred to the patients NFC-enabled devices, which will alert them when their next dose is due.

The Malkyrs: Arenas of Eternity, which is similar to a trading card game, uses NFC to enable ‘cards’ to evolve over time. Players log onto the game using NFC and then, by simply tapping their character or power cards on the NFC tag, can play with others. The NFC technology brings new dimensions to the game and its battles by allowing changes in the features of the game’s characters so that they can evolve as the game is played.

The NFC Tag Encryption helps users encrypt selected files on their NFC-enabled device in order to protect sensitive data. The encryption keys are stored off the device in an NFC tag.

The NFC YouTube allows users to switch from watching YouTube on a mobile device to a laptop or tablet by storing URL and time stamp data in NFC tags.

The NFC Secured Synchronization establishes a connection via NFC to allow data between two devices, such as laptops or tablets, to be securely synchronised over WiFi.

“The success of this contest has been amazing and we are extremely pleased with the results. The diversity of the submissions we received highlights the untapped capacity for creative applications with the winners clearly demonstrating unique and market-ready concepts that prove the potential of NFC. This contest has been a great indication of the momentum to bring NFC to PCs and tablets, congratulations,” said Rafael Sotomayor, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Secure Mobile Transactions, NXP Semiconductors.